I forget the name of it, but I remember there is (or at least used to be) a tool that would give you more granular control over the stuff that's under the hood of Windows.
If you search for "Windows God mode tool" or something along those lines, your should be able to find it.
Not sure if this will get rid of your pop-up modal specifically, but it might allow you to mess with other configurations that can prevent these sorts of things.
And push for legislation that doesn't allow em to do this in the first place.
Cause it doesn't make it right, but on some level it's hard to blame them for pushing the limits, if there's no resistance or repercussion. That's how we ended up in this mess.
Tech moves fast. Government moves slow. Most of these issues boil down to legislative failures.
I go hard when it comes to this. Firefox + uBlock Origin, use open source alternatives, don't communicate outside of Signal, 2FA on everything, you name it. And it's exhausting at times, not gonna lie. But my effort reinforces my sentiment that it shouldn't fall to the consumer to put in all this effort just to have some a basic, healthy blend of convenience, privacy, and security.
Spotube looks really interesting. It says that you can use it as anonymous/guest, but it looks like it still requires a Spotify account. I don't have an account, but I might have to make one just to test it out lol
The whole notion of "If you're not the product, then you're the product" died a while ago.
Now, you're paying for the product, and you continue to be the product.
Paying for the product = monthly/yearly subscription
You're the product = unique identifiers, data mining/harvesting, tracked across the web, etc. Perhaps even training some AI models in the background, too.
I agree. What I keep coming back to, though, is that these platforms do have more eyeballs on them. So the irony of it is that if that's where the attention is, that's where you need to be, but only in order to raise awareness.
Unfortunately, like you said, building a network of followers on these platforms ironically makes these platforms more powerful.
I think about this when it comes to YouTube channels as well. Think about privacy channels. There's lots of good/useful content on there, but I don't wanna have to follow that person on YouTube. And I don't wanna have to make a Google account to comment or otherwise engage with that person/channel. Yet, YouTube is too large of a distribution platform to ignore. So I don't blame them for being on there. Do I like it? Course not. But I can understand the (perceived?) necessity of it.
The goal is to funnel off these proprietary/exploitative walled ecosystems.
✅ Biometrics and ID stored forever who-knows-where
✅ Continued data mining and exploitation
✅ Total surveillance state
💩 The enshittification continues. Gotta love it.
Seriously though... I'm not bullish on this platform. I don't know what it's turning into, but if it truly is a "WeChat of the West," it's not something I'm interested in participating in. And I don't wanna have a hand in building it.
In this route, it means that X would really become an identity platform.
And us being on this platform gives it value. Gives it validity.
I wonder every single day if it makes sense to leave the platforms in protest, or stay in the belly of the beast and raise awareness from within.
I see value in both, but I don't think there's a way to know which is the "correct" or "best" approach until you have hindsight.
Either way, it's clear that we don't matter for anything other than exploitation. The business model doesn't allow for anything else, really.
Ah okay. Guess it's not much different than using Mullvad's content blocking DNS then.